Trust in public power companies misplaced … Former Labor minister Patrick Conlon urges carbon price to fix electricity system … A SENIOR Labor figure is urging a carbon price on electricity to lower household bills by kickstarting investment in new-generation power plants. – The Advertiser

Australian politicians have been obsessed with taxing carbon ever since the tax was briefly imposed and then repealed in mid-2104 by former prime minister Tony Abbott.

In fact, the Australian Labor Party wants up to half of the nation’s electricity to come from “renewables” by 2030. Former Labor state energy minister Patrick Conlon obviously endorses this position.

Conlon writes in Oz’s The Advertiser newspaper that, “Australian electricity consumers are at the mercy of big, old, dirty and cheap coal-fired power plants and failure to impose a carbon price is thwarting new investment.”

Conlon obviously has faith in government bureaucrats. Apparently, taxation is not even applied for purposes of raising revenue, but only to create better economic outcomes. Politicians in charge of taxation carefully determine where a given tax is needed and then apply them as a kind of medical tool with a surgeon’s skill.

More:

“Reliance on old, under-maintained coal burners flirts with disaster. If a couple of big units break down during a hot, high-demand summer, price hikes will obliterate any benefit of cheap coal,” writes Mr Conlon, energy minister from 2002 to 2011.

According to the article, Conlon is sure the state’s “reliance on wind power, in particular, is not to blame for high electricity prices.”

He is doubtless responding to a call by Liberal Party Sen. Chris Back to ban new wind farms because having so many turbines already in place was increasing energy costs and the potential for serious blackouts.

South Australia is suffering from a power crisis because it has shuttered so many coal plants in favor of wind. Back wants a cost-­benefit analysis done on the wind industry around the country.

Here’s a quote from The Australian, which recently wrote about him:

“There should be no further subsidies paid for an intermittent and unreliable power source that can be seen as a proven failure. There are solutions to our climate challenges but wind power is not one of them.”

Household electricity prices in Australia have risen by more than 40 percent between 2007 and 2012, the same period when the government offered lucrative wind subsidies.

Power prices in Australian states with a lot of wind power are almost double the rates in other states. Australia’s reliance on wind power risks damaging the country’s power grid because the amount of electricity generated by a wind turbine is very intermittent and doesn’t coincide with the times of day when power is most needed.

Exactly the same arguments can be made regarding solar power. The entire solar and wind industry is surely based on extravagant government subsidies, not just in Australia but around the world. China has recently declared a moratorium on more wind power in some regions. The energy is neither predictable nor efficiently stored.

The same problems occurred in the 1970s, the last decade when these sorts of solutions were obsessively pursued.

We’ve pointed out many times that the real reason governments are anxious to migrate to such “environmentally sound energy” likely has to do with control.

It is relatively easy to dig up coal, or even in some cases oil, and use it. But solar and wind are not so easy to capture and not so reliable. The idea is to build vast power plants and then work on eradicating more personal forms of power.

Conclusion: As usual, the ongoing effort is to strip people of the ability to survive without the massive resources of the state. And as usual, such programs are a gigantic waste of money and boondoggles as well.

And yet in stupid Ontario, we just can’t get enough of the god damned pinwheels. We just keep on charging into the future, ignoring that the damned things have FAILED EVERYWHERE across the globe.

Pete752

But Kathleen Wynn (jihadi kathy) the premier of Ontario and her compatriots will just raise electricity rates further, because of either the lack of wind, or the lack of sunshine or simply because the citizenry’s conservation efforts needed to keep up with their monthly electricity charges and the insane delivery rates.

Don’t kid yourself into thinking she won’t raise rates for those reasons. The 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour hike at the first of May this year was because of the mild 2015/16 winter and the exponential saving of power based on that circumstance.

john cummins

The idea that taxes can increase energy is akin to the idea that increased taxes can help “education”, when there is an direct negative relationship between education and increased monies.

Pete752

Did you know Ontario Power Generation (OPG) or any other electrical generating facility on the planet, has never created or generated one watt of electricity.
All the OPG and the other facilities do is capture electricity from nature, transmit it, meter it and charge ridiculous amounts for it. Electricity occurs naturally and until the late 1880’s this was a well known fact until J.P. Morgan and Thomas Edison stole Nicola Tesla’s discoveries and metered what was once provided by nature for
free. We have been fleeced big time since big money and government got
in the energy business.

john cummins

Oh, I failed to mention Tesla type of electricity, earlier. Good points.

natural human

That’s a very intriguing comment. Based on the breadth and depth of institutionalized lies I’ve been uncovering over the last ten years or so I do not believe one should just dismiss it. Can you link to some evidence beyond Tesla folklore?

john cummins

I’d also like to see real analyses of the cost of these alternatives with regards to pollution. What sort of pollution cost is there with production of wind machines? solar panels? Biofuels certainly pollute rivers if talking about switchgrass plants. How about energy in / energy out equations? Seems to me the most cost effective energy in energy out would be nuclear (and with some of the non-meltdown types of newer reactors we’ve given to China), and cleaner. And, when we look at oil, it certainly is not even known HOW oil is formed. Dr. Thomas Gold certainly would not agree with the textbook explanations, nor would mucho of the Russians. I think the ethanol additives have been shown to be much more polluting than regular, even older leaded gasolines, etc. Just a little science here and there would make me happier.

Praetor

They have done those analyses, they just don’t care.
I’m sure they already know that the renewables can support 500 million on earth, just not 7.5 billion on earth!!!

TSA_TheSexualAssault

The best long-term energy return is falling water. TVA and BPA run the big projects, but small companies have dams as well. Light water atomic reactors should be prohibited from new construction, esp. near earthquake faults.

ThomasJK

Isn’t “massive resources of the state” something of an oxymoron? Just what are the resources (massive or diminutive) that the states have that are not first taken from the Citizens and/or private sector economic enterprises? Just how do states provide subsidies for failed state sponsored energy providing enterprises without first taking from economic enterprises who are being powered by fossil fuels (nuclear included) or hydro?

Is there a wind turbine anywhere on the planet that is paying its own freight?

ThomasJK

Don’t overlook the reduction in the useful life of motor vehicles that are powered by even low percentage or dilute mixes of ethanol and gasoline.

“massive resources of the state” are also provided by the facilities of Central Banking. They can just print it up, and eventually the citizens are stuck with the bill. Get rid of central banks.

ThomasJK

I agree. But then I would still argue that anything that is provided by the facilities of Central Banking are still not “resources of the state.” They are the product of delayed thievery that is being perpetrated by the state via the facilities of Central Banking.

States’ resources, if they exist at all, are somewhere between a mirage and a fantasy that only exists in the minds of the crooks who make up the state. A bit like a cross between Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland and maybe a slice or two of The Wizard of Oz thrown in just to spice things up a bit.

History seems to illustrate that when founded, a state begins a one time, one way trip to oblivion.

Pedestrian

Quite so.

Praetor

Sorry to say, but good! Electricity is their ‘Achilles Heel’, the sooner the grid goes down the better. Maybe then sanity can be restored.

The minute, the I-Brain can’t be recharged is the minute that the people look-up and see their standing on a pile of ruble and its on fire.

The renewables work only on a small scale and only when the grid goes down and for just a small period of time.

Small scale renewables on every house would be the most cost effective way for renewable to be used. But we can’t do that can we. Our masters of delusion would lose some control, wouldn’t they!!!

Helix6

People are free to install small-scale renewables any time they want to. In fact, there were even incentives to do so at one time. But most people simply didn’t want to lay out the up-front cost.
If you want to point the finger somewhere, point it at our education system. Educating our kids about our energy infrastructure just isn’t in the curriculum. Especially the cost aspect. We seem to think it’s OK for our kids to spend 12 years in school and come out knowing nothing at all about our national infrastructure and what it takes to maintain it.
Not too hard to see how that’s all going to play out.

Centurian

All of this discussion ignores a few of the other negatives of wind farms for electricity.

1) The turbines kill a significant number of birds, including protected species. Funny position for the Greenies.

2) Every turbine sprays machine oil for a considerable distance behind it. This flammable and noxious oil increases the risk of fires and may be harmful to ground wildlife which consumes the plants that are contaminated.

3) The installation of high voltage lines and equipment into the relatively remote wild lands where most wind farms are located is an identified cause of grass and wild land fire ignition.

4) They require an amazing amount of maintenance. At any time, large or small wind farms may have as many as 1/3rd of the turbines out of commission. I have witnessed this north of Denver and in the Cajon Pass. What is efficient about having 1/3rd of your expensive resources out of service at any given time?

Take away the government largesse in supporting these things and they will go away promptly since no business person will intentionally lose money on such nonsense without government subsidies.

hvaiallverden

Whats the problem, we have had internal cumbustion engines for some centurys, PC just the half of an century and just now are we beginning to enderstand what actually happends when plants photosyntezies light and sends in through an entanglement, thrue an worm hole and comes out as good as before it went in.
Capice.
Solar panels as as for now just above the crap line, wind mills Are crap.
Coal mines can be made better easy and in the mean time humanity can do what they can do best, with an barrel of an gun behind its empty head, kickstart it back on track.

I know within some decades we have revolutionalised everything, then why is we then spoon feed domsdays as mass, screamed into our faces, 24/7.

The scinetific comenty is an shame, and an sham.
Mindless, spinless, and have for decades shown an amazing lack of balls what so ever, and on top of it dug them selfs into an medival perspective, where any opositions should be burned on an stake.
An science so corrupt I am in awe that there still is some people that takes their nonsense seriously as the latest Zika bollocs.

peace

jervis121

Looks like your English writing skills are very basic, but good enough to understand that you have made some very valid points about the CAGW climate change HOAX and the patently ridiculous mitigation technologies (of something that isn’t even occuring), being peddled by the insane leftist, green elites, such as wind turbines and solar ‘renewable energy’..

This is a very dangerous HOAX and also the biggest SCAM ever inflicted on any population, since the beginning of civilisation.
Yet the indoctrinated greenie trolls, the likes of whom have left their ill-informed comments here, are so hopelessly brainwashed that they cannot see the huge elephant in the room: That they are being used by Chairman Mao Obama and his many Socialist megalomaniac cohorts from the UN, as useful idiots to spread the propaganda that merely promotes the UN’s wicked Socialist ideology of CAGW junk-science and the horrible One World Government Agenda that it masks!

yarpos .

You add to their message by dishing up ranting abuse rather than logic and facts

Helix6

You seem to have a fixation on “greenie trolls”. You really should seek help. These obsessions aren’t healthy.

Clayton Smith

Australia has the world’s largest Thorium reserves and should be joining with the Chinese in building Molten Salt Thorium Reactors (MSRs). Go to http://www.energyfromthorium.com and get the story.

Tom

J. Baldwin was the tools editor for Whole Earth Review and Catalog. A truly amazing man, I didn’t realize how old he was until he was telling me about being with special forces in Alaska during WWII. He was in on the ground floor of wind energy, with hands-on experience in installation, maintenance, and even risking his life to stop a runaway turbine atop a 70-foot tower in a storm.

At a lecture he gave in the early 80’s, he told his audience that he had calculated that if one of the most popular small home wind generators ran full-blast for 20 years, (which of course, it never could) it would produce enough energy to smelt the copper for the windings.

We go backwards in total energy available with every wind generator built, and informed people have known this for decades. We consumed our one-time endowment of fossil fuels ever-faster chasing a chimera, but we had good intentions… and we all know where that path leads.

georgesilver

The main reason wind power doesn’t work is the wrong siting of the pylons. To gain as much wind as possible they should be near governments.

The Wikipedia defines renewable energy as,” Renewable energy is generally defined as energy that is collected from resources which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat.”Human timescale meaning the rough average age of a person i.e 70 odd years. Among these sources of energy solar and wind are the most popular.

When a debate ensues concerning the Wind power-plants, and goes straight to the carbon-footprints of the old coal powered plants, the blackouts and the subsidies given to new sources of fuel. It does once again expose the shallowness of our technical acumen as humans to generate power without –
1. Oil
2. Coal
“In fact, the Australian Labor Party wants up to half of the nation’s electricity to come from “renewable’s” by 2030.”
If the minister is made to retract on his personal opinion of renewable’s as of 2016 [which incidentally is so because of the incentive of investments coming into a country which is working actively to reduce its carbon footprint] then the plan of action must be concrete enough so as to not scare away new investors. Basically meaning that a plan-B should be ready before throwing away plan-A no matter which side of the debate is right scientifically. Failure to do so would mean only two things in my opinion –
1. Re-tracking on own’s promise of lesser Carbon-footprint either internationally or at home and,
2. A haphazard method of fixing the problem rather a permanent solution to it.
It is not that Wikipedia is 100% about the number of sources of renewable power, there is a very interesting scientific experiment which was conducted in an Italian university called E-cat. The experiment involves cold-fusion with the external surrounding being at room temperature; making it safe enough to have a device in one own’s backyard/barn.That is the claim theoretically anyway.http://ecat.com/ [Leonardo Corp.]
Is the newest sponsor(and the biggest yet as far as I can tell been following this experiment for the past 5 years now) of this endeavor by a certain Andrea Rossi from Italy.
Now apart from these sources of renewable fuels the world(even Holland) is starkingly short of options/choices. If one is to boycott Wind power altogether because of whatsoever reason, one better be careful..
In Australia’s case, either they should have an alternate plan in hand to come good on their promise(to its citizens and the world at large) or they should go easy on the failure of wind-power to come good on its word and work symbiotically with the international scientific committee to make it better.

Actually it already works very well, but only in an extremely limited number of cases where unusual locations, and other factors combine to overcome it’s obvious disadvantages in the mass market.

We should continue developing it however on a very small scale for these limited special applications because over time, (and I’m talking no more than 3 to 5 years), ongoing technological advances in the current state of the art will both broaden it’s practical applications, and as it gets used on a wider scale, the price differential will also disappear, thereby making it more and more viaible in an ever widening number of applications.

In short order however, it’s one MAJOR advantage will be sufficient to overcome any economic disadvantages it will still have, and that advantage is the user’s ability to be totally free of any form of control over his or her energy consumption, by the power elites who are forever trying to tighten their grip over us in any way they can.

It also may surprise many to learn how close we are to reaching that line of economic viability today, and as an engineer / builder with many years of experience in this narrow part of the market, I can say with certainty that anyone contemplating new construction of a substantial home, or commercial structure in the sunbelt (sorry Minnesota) will be VERY interested in what ‘s available right now. One new company in Texas recently shocked the heck out of me when I learned what was actually available as we speak. Their new projects director can be reached at tompaine@reagan.com

You mean governments around the world are pouring money into solar and wind power in order to make people more free of government and corporate control? You sure?

swemson

No…. The developments I’m referring to are for stationary uses only.

And the money you refer to that “governments around the world are pouring money into solar and wind power in order to make people more free of government and corporate control?” has in fact just the opposite goal… it’s to make people MORE rather than LESS dependent of government energy controls. (Your question makes me suspicious that it’s really coming from the Daily Bell staff….????? Please advise.

The pseudo scientific BS that governments are pushing is almost exclusively geared to vehicular use…

We’ll get there eventually too, but for right now, I’m referring to practical off-grid energy package for homes & commercial applications where the distance to the existing grid is long, and / or, where the buyer’s desire to be free & independent of any outside control over his / her energy consumption is sufficiently strong to overcome short term price differentials….. This is NOT really applicable for someone building a small, inexpensive home, the might well be sold in less than 5 years… (i.e. cases in which there’s insufficient time to recoup one’s investment”

fs

swemson

I get that you’re being sarcastic here, but no… you missed my point entirely, which is probably my fault for not going into sufficient detail about what I was referring to…

The solar system I was referring to is only partly based on “conventional solar” technology. In fact part of its strategy involves buying up solar panels in huge quantities from all the Solyndras of the world for 5 to 10 cents on the dollar, as they continue to go bankrupt over the next several years.

The solar that I was referring to is literally suitable ONLY for a VERY small percentage of cases that are unusual due to their isolated locations from the grid etc.. The unique feature of this type of solar installation is its ability to provide a true, 100% “off the grid” system that is totally reliable. This of course requires a modest amount of auxiliary back-up from a non solar source, which will probably not involve any “internal combustion” components, but instead rely on a mixture of wind, geo-thermal, and other alternative sources of power.

These small number of initial examples however, will be sufficient to create an effective showcase for the ultimate “REAL” advances in solar & energy storage technology which are still probably 5 to 25 years out before they could make a system such as this viable to the market on a much broader scale.

This system will also surprise conventional “solar thinking” in its heavy reliance on some very effective new (but actually revived OLD) construction techniques and materials which frankly have been mostly forgotten by the American energy market, due to the unique and aberrant market conditions for cheap energy products that we’ve lived with since the end of WWII.

Suffice it to say for now, that individuals of means, contemplating the construction or the renovation of a substantial primary or secondary residence in the sunbelt, will be pleasantly surprised by the kind of self sufficient energy system that is available to them right now as we speak, through a small group of specialty contractors already in operation in places like Texas & Arizona.

Anyone interested in learning more about this can contact one such supplier by eMail to: tompaine@reagan.com

I’m currently in the final planning stage of my own little “Galt’s Gulch” using this energy system out in the wilds somewhere of the American Southwest. Once it’s done….. color me gone!

Solar panels are “pre-paid electricity”. They store better than Diesel over decades. You will go through 5 sets of deep cycle batteries over the life of the panels. Pay-off in Hawaii (oil-fired electricity, excellent sun) is pretty good, Portland Oregon (hydro-power cheap, eternal cloud cover) pay-off is approximately break even in 30 years.

Of course, what price for power when the grid is down? A few hundred Watts of panels is only a few hundred bucks, with a whole system under $3000. LED’s are way better than kerosene light. Fire safety.

TSA_TheSexualAssault

I predict subsidized installations will soon be subject to large taxes. If you want a little backup power with solar & batteries, buy it yourself with cash. Don’t forget fuses and breakers.

Perry Munger

I’ve heard this before: new developments will continue to improve efficiency and effectiveness, but there is a rule in engineering: ‘efficiency cannot exceed 100%’. If there is no wind, no amount of efficiency will extract power. I agree that in limited applications, wind power makes sense and solar more so, but as bulk generation I believe it will never make sense, especially given that nuclear power is much cheaper and answers to carbon reduction, if you care about that sort of thing.

jervis121

Don’t waste your time, you silly brainwashed, greenie troll… Go away and try to spread your green hyperbole to some school kids or so
anyone else you can find that might be dumb enough to believe it, because nobody here will ever regard any of your biased, lefty nonsense as anything other than that…

Helix6

Wow! ANOTHER “brainwashed greenie troll”!
What a pathetic, closed-minded little world you live in. I should think you’d be happy with every watt you can get, but clearly this isn’t about watts. It’s about your teeny little word view, and how threatened you are by anyone who can see beyond it.
Or maybe you’re just a paid shill. Either way, it’s a sad way to live.

Our local Amish colony has done tremendous experimenting with solar and wind applications. They have learned to have a diesel/propane back up and that the real cost is the batteries for these systems.Their use is small specialized applications.

Rob Simpson

That’s fine, But for big grid based power, Wind turbines are useless..All need a fossil fuel back up running 24/7 adding to the carbon..

Helix6

Re: “The idea is to build vast power plants and then work on eradicating more personal forms of power.”

And the evidence you provide to back up this claim is…? Bupkas!

If you’re going to ream the wind/solar industries for subsisting on government handouts, why not the oil industry for its “oil depletion allowances” and the other $billions of subsidies they enjoy at public expense. Failing to mention these while lambasting those proffered to the solar and wind power industries exposes the bias behind articles like this one. And by all means don’t mention the “externalized” factors excluded from the cost calculations of fossil-fuel fired power plants, some of which can potentially to create billions of refugees and destroy entire agricultural regions.

I should think that, in today’s world, one would be thrilled by every watt that could be generated — especially the clean watts.
But — I guess not. What a sad, pathetic display of ignorance and bias.

Helix6

Oops! I left out the qualifier “willful” when mentioning “ignorance” in the last line above.

You need to do more than drop in here and leave a snide comment. Why don’t you start by reading some of the hundreds of articles over the past eight years we’ve written on the subject.

Helix6

Actually, I am a long-time reader of The Daily Bell, though an infrequent commenter. I’ve read many of its articles and I’m very well aware of TDB’s editorial position. I read TDB’s articles — many of which are excellent — to learn what I can from them, generally accounting for its editorial viewpoint in the process.

In this case, however, I think the editorial bias is so strong, the use of pejorative terms so pervasive, and the conclusion so thinly supported by the evidence presented in the article that it should not be allowed to pass unchallenged.

The most egregious fallacy in the article is assuming the conclusion and then stating it as the conclusion. This seems to be the entire purpose of the last three paragraphs of the article.
Of course there are many other reasons why government officials might want to support renewable energy other than a pathological desire to render their constituency impotent. For example, they may not want to see their state capital under water. Or they may have concerns over the Millennium Drought and its possible contributing factors. Or they may see it prudent to prepare for the day when the “low-hanging fruit” of coal supplies begins to run low. But this article glides right on by these legitimate concerns and asserts the basest possible motives to government officials pondering these issues. Then states that assertion as the take-home message of the article.

I could go on. The use of pejorative phrases such as “these sorts of solutions were obsessively pursued (in the 1970s)” to describe an era when the actual thrust was to explore the feasibility of solar and wind power in the light of then-recent technological advances is, to my mind, a deliberate attempt to manipulate readers into substituting a negative emotional response for reasoned analysis.

Similarly, statements like “the entire solar and wind industry is surely based on extravagant government subsidies”, while true, conveniently leaves aside the fact that the fossil fuel industries also enjoy a whole host of subsidies both direct and indirect, not the least of which is the privilege of using the atmosphere as an aerial sewer free of charge. That’s pretty much what the carbon tax is all about — leveling the playing field between producers who foul the air with impunity and those who at least try to mitigate their emissions.

And while we’re on the topic of the carbon tax, what about those statements made by former Labor state energy minister Patrick Conlon, held up by this article as the poster child for those “obsessed with taxing carbon”? The article goes on to tie Conlon’s remarks to wind generation through the statement “He is doubtless responding to a call by Liberal Party Sen. Chris Back to ban new wind farms because having so many turbines already in place was increasing energy costs and the potential for serious blackouts.”

Now *there’s* a splendid ruse! This assertion manages to damn Conlon, the Liberal party, and wind energy without ever getting around to supporting the assertion! The problem with this is t even the most cursory look into the The Advertiser story reveals that Conlon favored the carbon tax because it would encourage investment in high-efficiency **fossil fuel** power stations!
To the article’s credit, it does obliquely admit to this when it mentions Adelaide’s Pelican Point (gas-fired) power plant. What it doesn’t mention is that the cost of electricity in South Australia has many contributing factors, the major ones being substantial price increases by South Australia’s transmission and distribution operators, as well as reliance on a single interconnector for importation of out-of-state electricity; a transmission line whose capacity has been impacted in recent years by maintenance activities. The Advertiser article clearly stated that Conlon mentioned these as important causes underpinning South Australia’s higher electric prices. Sadly, the Daily Bell article failed to pass this information on to its readers, leaving them with the impression that wind generation was the culprit.

Before leaving the topic of the carbon tax, it’s a no-brainer that a power station that just dumps its waste on the environment is going to be cheaper to run that one that attempts to mitigate this practice. The former will always win out over the latter in the absence of operating standards in exactly the same way that sweatshops will win out over factories that clean up after themselves and provide decent working conditions for their workers. In the absence of government regulation, all producers will immediately find themselves in a race to the bottom — even those who want to do well by their workers and society at large. The free market — which The Daily Bell clearly supports — contains no mechanism to guard against this reality. Thus it falls to governments to represent the will of the people in this respect.

I was going to finish by enumerating the many fallacies of critical thinking that appear in this article. But then I found that I would have to cite almost every single paragraph, so I’ll just close with an early example. In paragraph 2, the first real paragraph in the article, the author leads off with the assertion that Australian politicians have been “obsessed” with taxing carbon. I’m of the opinion that “obsessed” is a highly charged emotional term, and its use here is attempt by the author to lead the reader into substituting a negative emotional response for reasoned judgment.

If that’s the author’s intent, then this article belongs in Editorials section, not in News Analysis.

jervis121

What a STUPID, biased, RANTING, brainwashed, loonie lefty lunatic troll you are. LOL!
I stopped reading after the first paragraph of your mindless, nonsense greenie drivel!

Helix6

You mean, you stopped reading right after “I read TDB’s articles — many of which are excellent — to learn what I can from them, generally accounting for its editorial viewpoint in the process.” Please show me where the “mindless nonsense greenie drivel” is in there.

Wind and solar work okay with a Diesel charger for dark and windless times, but don’t scale up to municipal size. High-efficiency appliances, careful battery management, heating with wood/propane, and a willingness to spend US$10K+ up-front will get you power at 3x the cost of grid power (3x your old power bill when you left everything on and heated/cooled air & water with KW/Hrs). But, you can be many miles from the last power line!
To make yourself feel better, use a baseline of running a genset 24/7, and your alt-energy is reducing the run-time (saving money). When your home is 10M long and 2.5M wide, this is okay.

PattyWise

Look climate change is real; just as DiCaprio he swears its really, real.